Research on the barbiturate sodium pentothal (the proverbial "truth serum") begins.
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J. Stephen Horsley at London Hospital notices that patients treated with the barbiturate Nembutal appeared to lose their inhibitions and share very personal information. Interested in this phenomenon as a possible aid to psychotherapy, he continued experimenting with sodium amytal and sodium pentothal.

From its earliest days, US intelligence research into psychoactive drugs depended heavily on the cooperation of civilian researchers. This research was directed by Dr. Winfred Overholser of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C.

British Special Operations Executive (SOE) begins Project SACCHARINE, investigating the use of various drugs to aid troops in combat. They evaluate several amphetamines as sources of emergency energy.
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The French Medico-Legal Society determines that confessions extracted under sodium pentothal are too unreliable to be used as evidence in court. Its conclusion was accepted by legal systems around the world.
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The Nuremberg Code is written after Nazi experiments on concentration camp inmates come to light during the Nuremberg Trials. The Code states that researchers must obtain full voluntary consent from all subjects, which is official US policy to this day.

Hungary tries Cardinal Josef Mindszenty, who publicly confesses to crimes he clearly did not commit. The CIA fears that he has been brainwashed by unknown means, reigniting US intelligence interest in mind control.

CIA director Richard Hillenkoetter authorizes CIA Project BLUEBIRD, charged to investigate through scientific means various forms of mind control including interrogation techniques, brainwashing, and other behavioral research. The Nazi Dachau experiments are scrutinized, but are determined to be too saturated with sadism to be useful.

Project BLUEBIRD operatives experiment with interrogation techniques on a suspected double agent in Japan. They investigate debilitating heat, combinations of benzedrine and sodium amytal, and picrotoxin. Details are scarce, but the operation is considered a success.

Psychology professor G. Richard Wendt receives $300K from Project CHATTER, along with 30 grams of pure heroin and 11 pounds of cannabis from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Student volunteers are administered drugs in double-blind studies. Volunteers are never told what they had been given.

CIA Operation CASTIGATE, directed by US Navy Project CHATTER personnel, conducts experiments on a truth serum in Germany. The operation is an embarrassing failure for the Navy, and Project CHATTER never recovers. The CIA now has primary ownership of mind control research.
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The Navy's embarassment was primarily due to the incompetence of their favorite researcher, Professor G. Richard Wendt, who had assured his Navy handlers that he had developed a reliable truth serum. After flying Wendt and his mistress to Europe and setting a covert operation in motion, the CIA and Navy operatives were chagrined to learn that Wendt's truth serum consisted of a thoroughly-studied and unreliable cocktail of Seconal, Dexedrine, and THC.

CIA director Allen Dulles authorizes Project MKULTRA under the direction of Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb later testifies that MKULTRA's mission was "to investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual's behavior by covert means."
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The operational division is called MKDELTA, and the whole project is run out of the CIA Technical Services Staff.

They continue funneling large amounts of money through various direct and indirect conduits into LSD research. Two primary conduits are the the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research and (for a year or two) the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Much of the basic research on LSD over the next several years in the United States may not have been funded were it not for MKULTRA.

MKULTRA hires former Narcotics Bureau officer George White to run a safe house in New York City. In an operation that will come to be called Midnight Climax, the safe house is used to surreptitiously slip drugs to civilians so their responses can be monitored.

Under the direction of MKULTRA, Dr. Harris Isbell, director of the Addiction Research Center, begins performing drug tests on his inmate population.
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Patients, who are confined to the facility to receive treatment for addiction, are paid for participation in Isbell's experiments with hard drugs. Inmates are injected with large doses of bufotenine, psilocybin, scopolamine, LSD, mescaline, and DMT.

British intelligence administers LSD to Royal Air Force volunteers. They eventually conclude that 'Research is desirable into the use of LSD-25 as a possible effective agent for use in interrogation.'
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CIA director Dulles commissions Dr. Harold Wolff to conduct a study on communist brainwashing techniques. After conducting an exhaustive study, Wolff concludes that the Chinese and Soviets use a combination of coercion, stress, and pressure, and have no machines, pills, or rays.

Sidney Gottlieb doses Frank Olson and several other US Army Special Operations Division officers at a CIA/Army joint retreat. Olson responds badly, and falls into lasting depression, vacillating between apparent normalcy and severe paranoia and depression.
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Although the CIA staffs psychiatrists with security clearances to help people in these circumstances, Gottlieb refers Olson to Dr. Harold Abramson, an immunologist with no training in psychiatry, for treatment. Gottlieb is clearly trying to cover for his malfeasance, as dosing Olson and subsequently failing to report it were in violation of CIA policy and federal law.

Frank Olson falls from a hotel window to his death. The event is described as a suicide, though serious questions are later raised about this explanation (see 1994 below).
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The Olson family made numerous inquiries into how Frank Olson was brought from contentment to suicidal depression literally overnight. The CIA responded by denying any role whatsoever in Olson's death, but an internal review uncovered that Gottlieb had violated CIA policy and federal law in dosing Frank Olson.

The total fallout of the internal investigation is a classified memo noting that Gottlieb exercised "poor judgment", but also stressing that this should not be considered a reprimand.

CIA agent Morse Allen and Dr. Maitland Baldwin of the NIH propose extreme sensory deprivation experiments. The proposal is shot down during review by CIA medical agents, who suggest that the experimenters consider "volunteer[ing] their heads for use in Dr. Baldwin's 'noble' project."
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George White opens additional safe houses in San Francisco and Marin, and oversees them along with the New York safe house. Prostitutes are paid to surreptitiously dose their customers with LSD, while being monitored by CIA operatives. This operation is now referred to as Operation Midnight Climax.

R. Gordon Wasson participates in a psilocybin mushroom velada in Mexico. A few months later he is contacted by Professor James Moore, who asks to accompany Wasson on his next expedition the following summer, and offers to underwrite the trip with a $2K grant from the Geschickter Fund. Unbeknownst to Wasson, Moore is a CIA agent, and the Geschickter Fund is an MKULTRA conduit.

The CIA Intelligence Center at Fort Holabird and the Chemical Warfare Laboratories at Edgewood begin working together. Thrity to thirty-five volunteers are administered LSD, some of them as many as twenty times in a two-year period
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Five civilian volunteers at Edgewood Arsenal are given PCP in a search for incapacitating agents. Experiments are discontinued after one subject ends up in the hospital for six weeks with paranoid psychosis.

Bay of Pigs invasion ends in disaster. President Kennedy vows to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces". CIA Director Dulles and Deputy CIA Director Charles Cabell are forced to resign. John McCrone is appointed the new Director and is instructed to clean house.
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Earman finds "the concepts involved in manipulating human behavior ... to be distasteful and unethical." He finds that numerous unwitting civilian subjects became ill for hours or days because of substances they were given, and notes that outside doctors should be discouraged from learning the real reasons of illness. Gottlieb's supervisor Richard Helms advocates for the continuance of Midnight Climax. McCrone takes no action and the safe houses remain operational.

Several programs are discontinued, while several more carry on under new administration, including George White's safe houses, funding for LSD testing on Federal penitentiary inmates, sensory deprivation experiments, and covert funding for psychoactive research made through the Geschickter Foundation.

In the aftermath of Watergate, CIA director Schlesinger orders all CIA employees to inform him of illegal actions they have conducted in their operations, and he learns of Frank Olson's death. Part of the resulting report is leaked to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

Seymour Hersh writes an article for the New York Times detailing criminal CIA domestic operations, creating an uproar. President Ford appoints committee chaired by VP Nelson Rockefeller to investigate intelligence improprieties.

Senator Edward Kennedy's Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research holds public hearings on MKULTRA. The investigation is something of a showboating opportunity. The Subcommittee does not pursue any of the numerous, obvious perjuries.

Harry Isbell tells a Senate Subcommittee "The ethical codes were not so highly developed, and there was a great need to know in order to protect the public in assessing the potential uses of narcotics ... I personally think we did a very excellent job."
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The Olson family learns that Frank was surreptitiously dosed with LSD, after decades of denial by the CIA that there were any unusual circumstances to his death. Frank's widow describes Gottlieb as "despicable".

John Marks files a FOIA request, eventually obtaining redacted versions of the surviving seven boxes of MKULTRA records. He begins the research that leads to the publication of his book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.

James Starrs, a George Washington University forensic pathologist, examines Frank Olson's exhumed corpse and calls the evidence "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide." He describes clear evidence of blunt force trauma to the head prior to Olson's fall.
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